In one of the comment threads below, Jeff Meyers wrote:
“Properly defending, resurrecting, and preserving ‘Reformed tradition’ should be all about recovering what ought to be central to our theological life—namely, sola scriptura. After all, our tradition is really kind of an a-tradition.â€
This is really a key point that each side needs to grapple with, and I don’t want it to get lost in the trenches. Meyers is certainly correct that at least part of being Reformed (or being Protestant for that matter) is being identified with an anti-tradition. Those of us hoping to preserve and defend a Reformed tradition must deal with this uncomfortable fact.
Christianity is a conversionary religion. To that extent, it contains within it powerful iconoclastic symbols and myths. As such, the symbols of conversion in Christian history remain powerful and potent tools, available to be picked up and used, against the dominant culture and tradition of the church by would-be reformers. Put another way, when the social authority of the church to retain the allegiance of its members through its particular tradition and culture is in decline, that culture is vulnerable to attack by anyone who wants to wield the substantial iconoclastic, anti-traditional authority of conversion. The history of the church is filled with these conversionary upheavals. Many of them have been deeply misguided and ultimately unsuccessful, while others have resulted more or less in renewal—the largest of these being, of course, the Protestant Reformation. While largely true and necessary, this highly successful attack on Christian tradition and culture loosed a problem on the world that still haunts us today. Because, to oversimplify considerably, what you create is a self-perpetuating progression wherein today’s conversionary movement becomes tomorrow’s tradition that is in turn attacked by the new wave of reformers. The history of the modern era is to a large extent the history of waves of reform, each group seeking to draw a line in the sand at some different point and seeing it washed away in the seemingly inevitable tide of a conversionary society.
In other words, conversionary states are highly unstable. Conversionary, iconoclastic, anti-traditional experiences must be consolidated; literally, rooted deeply in good soil so that they will last over an extended period of time. Thus, at its best, Christianity is not only a conversionary religion. It also functions to create a new identity in the believer as a member of a social order that really exists and replaces the old orders which the conversion experience stripped away. Christianity provides a mythic, cultic structure within which the new morality and new social bonds will flourish and survive across many generations. This mythic or cultic structure is created by a network of habitual relationships and practices that center around rituals, the ordering of time in cyclic calendars, specific ceremonies, and informal expectations and loyalties. All of which function in a particular way to foster a “commons†or a “common good†or a “common memory.†These commons engender loyalties that go far beyond the loyalties that might be demanded by less organic structures like laws or rules or regulations. They create a group identity and solidarity that might best be summed up in our everyday language as a common culture which is, of course, a tradition.
Post-Reformation, there exists the very real problem of how can a movement founded so completely on iconoclasm and anti-tradition consolidate its gains and restore any semi-permanent order? The lessons of history do not give much evidence of there being a satisfactory answer to that question.
Instead, we are left with a church that is far more dependent on conversion than on tradition, going so far as to say that American Protestantism is premised on the constant need for a new conversion which, it teaches, can never be found in any tradition.
Wilfred McClay has argued that because evangelical faith is so dependent on stories of transformation and conversion, both individually and socially, it “exists in tension with settled ways, established social hierarchies, customary usages, and entrenched institutional forms.†Yankee Puritanism, in fact, has been a driving force behind every major reform movement in American history, from the abolition of slavery to the temperance movement to women’s suffrage and labor reforms during the industrial revolution to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s to today’s anti-smoking campaigns.
American Protestants, including Reformed Protestants, have been robust believers and participants in what historian Herbert Butterfield has called the Whig view of history. Butterfield describes the tendencies of certain “whiggish†historians to interpret human events as a progressive march through time. They celebrate successful and successive revolutions and view each generational reform as a stepping stone to the next, all to produce a narrative which views the past with suspicion, ratifies the present, and supposes an even more glorious future.
It is this historical understanding of human life as a series of progressive conversions embodied so often by American Protestants that is at the heart of the corrosion of tradition social structures such as the family and church.
All of that is prologue for what I want to say about the FV controversy in this context, which, for the two of you still reading, is the real payoff.
The historical phenomena, analyzed most brilliantly by Eric Voegelin, which is generated by the threat of constant iconoclasm is that of “dogmatomachy,†or the rule of men who have forgotten the underlying spiritual experiences communicated by the symbols of dogma out of fear of losing the faith. In a dogmatomachy, questioning is not allowed, and rote adherence to formulaic expressions is demanded as a symbol of fealty to the party of tradition over and against the threat of anarchic anti-tradition.
RC Sproul on the floor of the PCA GA was, from an analytic point of view, ludicrous. However, it was a brilliant bit of rhetorical sword play in service of the dogmatomachy. Thus, the most compelling characteristic of the FV controversy is that of an age old stand-off with the anti-traditionalist forces arrayed on one side and the dogmatomatic forces arrayed on the other. This kind of a stand off is incredibly difficult to recognize and analyze when one is immersed in it, and even if it is recognized, it is even more difficult to break through.
The FV is right to object to the dogmatomachy and its techniques of squelching questions but wrong to ground their objection in anti-tradition. The anti-FV is right to object to the anti-tradition but wrong to ground their objection on dogma.
The key methodology for getting past this impasse, according to Voegelin, is to remember that behind every dogmatic statement there is a question. And behind every question is an experience. And we ought to ask, what are the experiences driving the questions that lie behind the statements being flung from each side?
I will suggest again that the experiences on both sides can best be understood by understanding the polluted soup of late-modernity that we all swim in—disenchantment, creeping unbelief and practical atheism, fear of loss, alienation, disoriented selves, etc., etc.
I don’t think the Reformation was as iconoclastic as you do, Caleb. But we’ve had this discussion before. My own read of the West in the 16th century is that there were lots of forces that created cracks within Christendom (and that Christendom itself in the West was never as coherent as that word implies).
But Voegelin aside, and it is a big aside with words like dogmatomachy (does DRC supply a glossary?), a simple point should not be missed about FV. How can you claim as an FV advocate to be a-traditional and then turn around and affirm a religion of inheritance. The FV folks put a lot of stock in infant baptism and the passing on of the faith from parents to children. This is the stuff of generational succession. And then — hold on to your seat — we’re confronted with the Bible only and not being bound by tradition.
It’s not just that FV seems to hold on to the substance of tradition by teaching about and practicing infant baptism. It is also that FV implies a reliance upon patterns or forms of inheritance that go into the making of a tradition. And so my mind, if not my eyes, is left spinning.
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Darryl, exactly, one cannot recover traditional forms with anti-traditional rhetoric.
I agree that Christendom was not coherent or unified in the legal-textualist sense in which we think of these things. That was a point I strove to make earlier. And I agree that my account above is overly simplistic, and that the Reformation was an exceedingly complex historical event.
However, I do think that anyone in your or my shoes, attempting to uphold and fortify a Reformed Tradition, must account in some shape or form for the tremendously destructive progressive forces unleased in the modern era. And such accounting cannot merely consist of falling back on a rule of dogma. Not only because such a rule becomes quickly devoid of spiritual substance, but also because it is ineffective and actually strengthens the forces of anti-tradition.
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Caleb,
Are you suggesting then, that we recover traditional forms with dogma (instead of with anti-traditional rhetoric)?
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No, I think I made it clear that true recovery requires finding a way out of the impasse between anti-tradition and dogmatomachy.
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I’m rather appalled to read that I or anyone else in “FV” is anti-tradition. True, we recognize that the Biblical history alternates between times of paradigm-shift and times of normal development, as I articulated in *Through New Eyes.* And we’ve mostly all read some Rosenstock-Huessy. But anti-tradition? Nobody I’ve ever encountered was more familiar with the whole Christian tradition than Rosenstock-Huessy and Rousas J. Rushdoony. Both men had read the original sources of all the periods and were broadly catholic while being extremely conservative protestants. Are we FVers “anti-tradition” for wanting to return to the dancelike rhythmical singing of the Reformation? Are we anti-tradition in seeking to restore psalmody? (Find me anyone else in the American Reformed world who has worked harder than I/we have over the last 30 years to restore both metrical and chanted psalmody!)Are we “anti-tradition” for maintaining that God is Father and Israel is His son (Ex. 4), not God is Suzereign and Israel his wage/merit earning employee? Are we anti-traditional to seek to follow the Reformers and have weekly communion with both elements, bread and WINE? Are we anti-traditional for insisting on the mediatorial reign of Jesus Christ over the nations? On a list that seems largely to be made up of Covenanters, I should think the “FV” would be seen as a conservative reaction against the recent innovations of the Klineans, pop-worshippers, grape-juicers, and aisle-walkers! If FV appears radical and anti-traditional, it is because American Calvinism has moved so very far from the Reformation and the mindset of the Divines.
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James, you appear to be closed in spirit to any critical self-evaluation in this regard, as I expect the dogmatizers who have anathemized you will be equally closed. This gets us exactly nowhere.
Yes, as I have suspected, the FV may be a conservative reaction of discontent with dogmatic keepers of a tradition which appears decrepit, brittle, empty of substance, and unable to resist cultural tides of relevancy, and other psycho-social whims.
This gets to the question of: “What problem is the FV trying to address in the Reformed Faith?”
But this reaction of discontent must also be self-reflective and exceedingly careful not to pitch head-long into the kind of conversionary anti-traditionalism which was expressed so succinctly by Jeff Meyers and other FVers.
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I may want to develop this in a separate post, but something has to be said about the charge of biblicism. It is biblicism to assert that all theological discussions must be conducted in the language of the Bible, and only in the language of the Bible. It is not biblicism to grant the need for specialized confessional or dogmatic vocabulary in its place, but to seek to retain the right to speak in the biblical language in the general life of the church. I grew up among biblicists (and they had many virtues), but it has to be said, echoing what Jim just said above, that the FV does not constitute a biblicist movement at all. There are three positions here, not two: biblical language all the time, biblical language none of the time, and biblical language some of the time.
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Doug, I take your point but FVer’s speak with multiple tongues (as you indicated in your first post). Some of James’ rhetoric has certainly been biblicistic — we’re just trying to do God’s work in God’s words. And several comments have indicated that a high regard for the Bible comes with not giving the Westminster Standards the benefit of the doubt (which is very different from saying they are without error). Maybe my understanding of biblicism is wrong, but I do see a problem in those who claim to be part of a tradition (say, a minister in one of the NAPARC churches who has taken ordination vows) then acting as if that tradition does not bind because the Bible says something different. It is the bindingness of the Reformed tradition that I see lacking in several FV comments, in which case the Westminster Standards become as brittle as they do for Caleb’s dogmatochieans (or however Voegelin renders them).
So instead of three positions on the Bible, I see three on the tradition: 1) we start within the tradition and regard its interpretation of the Bible as mainly correct; 2) We start with the Bible and see if the tradition is correct; 3) we start with the Bible and claim the tradition when we get in trouble. “We” in all these cases is a group of people who have been baptized (or had their baptism recognized by) and received into a Reformed and Presbyterian communion.
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My comments should not be misconstrued to suggest that I or anyone else in FV circles are into “anti-traditionalism.” I specifically avoided that term. My concern is that many seem to have lost the ability to critique and correct our tradition when the Bible calls for it.
Caleb: Jordan actually provided the beginning of an answer to your question “What problem is the FV trying to address in the Reformed Faith?†He listed a number of practices that he and others have been trying to correct. The “reaction of discontent” from Jordan is itself an answer to the question.
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Jeff, no, you didn’t avoid that term. You stated, correctly I might add, that the Reformed tradition is really a kind of a-tradition. Why back off after I conceed the point, especially when the point creates more trouble for tradtionalists like Hart and me? You back off because it gives too much ammo to the brittle traditionalists who fear questions and wish to shut you up. Let’s bring a dose of honesty to the table here, from all sides, eh?
Jordan made a start, but practices are symptoms, not root causes. I’ll ask again: what spiritual condition prevails such that the Reformed faith is rendered helpless to resist the tide of what Lints appropriately called the “evangelical party in our midst”?
I suggest that both sides of this controversy are promoting that condition to the ultimate ruin of the goods both sides believe they are protecting.
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Dr. Hart, what FV comments lack bindingness to the Reformed tradition? In other words, what FV arguments or practices do you see as departing from the Westminster standard’s traditional interpretive range of meaning?
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There is no ordination vow that requires epistemological submission to the Westminster Standards. The Standards themselves call such vows “superstitious and sinful snares.” (WCF 22.7) I think what you are thinking of is the ordination vow (that is actually an oath, technically) in which ministerial candidates “swearing solemnly calleth God to witness what he asserteth [i.e., that the Westminster Standards ] . . . and to judge him according to the truth or falsehood of what he sweareth.” (WCF 22.1)
This is a very grave error that I fear infects a large segment of the Reformed churches. It constitutes epistemological idolatry. And it explains why the attacks against FV (which may very well deserve robust criticism) have not been articulated in terms of the FV’s deviation from God’s Word but in terms of its deviation from standardized dogma.
I value the Reformed confessions and the Reformed tradition, but my conscience is bound to God alone, and in this the Reformed confessions themselves agree with me. (WCF 20.2)
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practices are symptoms, not causes?
They are symptoms, but they are not merely symptoms. The law of prayer always affects the law of belief.
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Jordan said: “I value the Reformed confessions and the Reformed tradition, but my conscience is bound to God alone, and in this the Reformed confessions themselves agree with me.”
Another fine example of the anti-traditionalist protestant principle at work. And yes, again, the principle is embedded in reformational expressions. It had to be, given what they were up against.
The best of our tradition proper, however, has implicitly understood this as a type of noble Platonic lie.
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Jon, I don’t disagree that these things are cyclical. Symptoms can in turn deepen the crisis occasioned by a root cause. I still think it important in this instance to drive beyond and beneath the practices being objected to.
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Perhaps I’m in denial, but I honestly don’t think I’m an anti-traditionalist. People who know me think I’m a tradition-freak.
Caleb, are you honestly saying that WCF 20.2 is a Platonic lie? Why is it ok to disregard this paragraph of the WCF but not the sections the FV’s are questioning? I’m confused.
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Mr. Stegall, you seem to assume that I and others are practicing some kind of private interpretation over tradition. That is not the case. Have you read much of anything we’ve written over the past 25-30 years? I listed several aspects of historic Christian faith that (a) are Reformational (b) are in the WCF or within its umbrella (c) are ignored today.
I’m going to have to repeat this again and again until it gets through I guess, but what I wrote is that the original FV conference was controversial because the men were saying God’s Word in God’s words. That still is very controversial, it seems. E.g.: What Paul says about the reality of apostasy in Hebrews is apparently unacceptable and needs to be explained away instead of accepted as part of our belief. I never said nor have I ever implied that we are anti-traditional. I wrote that what was controversial about the original FV conference was Biblical language. It still is.
“Be baptized and wash away your sins” is in the Bible. “One baptism for remission of sins” is in the Creed. “Baptism is the seal of regeneration” is in the WCF. WE accept this and deal with it. We don’t scream and yell and run away and accuse those who use Bible language of being Romanists and Arminians!
In face we are the most respectful of church tradition. WE are the ones advocating returning to the first 1000 years of Christendom and letting our baptized children to the table. WE are the one advocating the singing of Biblical psalms, not only metrical psalms, as the Church did for 1500 years.
I’m really tired of hearing that we despise tradition. Get off this spot and start dealing with real issues, if that’s what you want to do. Sorry if I sound irritated, but that’s because I am irritated.
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Jordan wrote: “Caleb, are you honestly saying that WCF 20.2 is a Platonic lie?”
Yes.
I am not disregarding the paragraph, and neither am I slavishly tied to an overly literal reading of it. It is the peculiar poverty of the modern mind to treat texts as if they did not arise in a particular political and historical context and as if they were not put in the service of particular ends in particular power struggles over different ideas and conceptions of right order.
If your conscience is “bound to God alone,” and you are entirely earnest about that, then you are ipso facto an anti-traditionalist. That your friends think otherwise may be a function of widespread misunderstanding of what tradition is and/or some relatively deep cognative dissonance within yourself that believes it can defend certain traditional goods by adherence to “God alone.”
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James, I don’t think you despise tradition. I just don’t think you understand how it functions.
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I don’t think you know enough about me to make that judgment. It may well be that you and I differ on how it functions, though.
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Myers writes: “My concern is that many seem to have lost the ability to critique and correct our tradition when the Bible calls for it.” A finer piece of biblicism I could not produce. The Bible doesn’t call for the revision of the Reformed tradition, interpreters of the Bible do. As Shedd said, whenever someone claims the Bible for their faith, they are really claiming their interpretation of the Bible.
Which leads to Mr. Siverd’s point about epistemological submission to the Westminster Standards, who’s talking about epistemology? I didn’t know the Standards took a position on it, or what the act of submitting epistemologically might look like (please, no one quote Paul on taking every thought captive, please, I beg you). What Mr. Siverd fails to observe is that in the very chapter on Christian liberty he cites for freedom of conscience, the confession says that we can’t use Christian liberty to oppose any lawful power, whether civil or ecclesiastical. So the church has power to bind consciences, and traditions do so less proactively. In either case, if you’re in the church and in the tradition, you can’t claim freedom from it. It doesn’t make sense, nor is it fair. You can’t have a tradition or a church without some imposition on your liberty.
Does this mean the tradition can’t be revised? Of course not. But Presbyterians being good at committees have all sorts of procedures for revising a confession. One that we don’t use is the lone memo telling the church at large it needs to change its confession.
Josh, I think one example of FV going beyond the interpretive breadth of the standards comes somewhere on this site where a variety of revisions and objections were made to WCF ch. 7. In fact, in my reading of FV on justification I sense that a lot of confusion has come from variant readings of the covenant of works.
While I’m at it, the OPC report on justification departs from the dogmatomachy critique at least to the extent that it does try to interpret many of the passages in question. It’s a long report and that may explain why it seems to have been neglected. But it is readily available:
Click to access justification2004.pdf
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James, I am sure you are correct that I don’t know enough about you. I am not trying to make this personal. Just responding according to what pops up on the screen.
It may help clarify matters to discuss this in the language of adherence. To what should a traditionalist adhere? Or with a slightly different emphasis, what is the spiritual quality of adherence that characterizes a member of a tradition?
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There is an important distinction that my previous comment presupposed between beliefs and conduct. This distinction is set forth in WCF 20.2 itself. Churches can requires us to conform our conduct to their lawful commands so long as they are not contrary to the Word, but they cannot require to conform our beliefs (or acts of worship, if you agree with the WCF) to anything other than the Word of God (“beside it” – WCF 20.2).
The church does have the power to bind consciences but only in this sense: that upon issuing a lawful command a person subject to the authority of the church is morally obligated to comply. However, a command to believe something just because the church said (rather than because it has already been said by God in his Word) is not a lawful command.
When I said I am conscience-bound to God alone, I wasn’t denying the fact that all sorts of subsidiary authorities might require me to do things I don’t like but that I still feel obligated to do because they are not contrary to God’s Word (pay taxes, keep my kids away from the communion table). I was saying that I am not obligated to believe anything (as an article of faith) or do anything (as an act of worship) just because someone said it unless that person is God (or unless that person is appropriately repeating God).
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Mr. Hart. Forgive me for going out on a limb here, but that’s the nature of limited discussions like this where we cannot see one another, hear tones of voice, and cannot chat back and forth at length. It seems to me that what you are writing here departs pretty much wholesale from the theology of the Reformation and of the Divines. It seems to me that the position you articulate leaves no room for the work of the Holy Spirit in the Word. Wineskins cannot ever be burst, because everything has to go through committee. The Spirit does not work through man-made confessions, and to treat confessions as if they were lenses through which to read the Bible is to make them into mediators between Christ/Word and man, which is exactly what the Reformation was about. This is no different from the EO use of ikons as mediators between us and Christ and the Roman view of Mary et al. as mediators between us and Christ. Surely the Confession is not a lens between the Bride and Her Husband’s words, but a set of boundaries within which we read the Bible within the church, boundaries that are sometimes strict and sometimes fairly loose (since the WCF is a consensus document).
I find that Presbyterians who know all about the WCF cannot tell me what the five basic offerings of Leviticus are, cannot describe the Tabernacle, do not know the laws of Uncleanness, and cannot tell me the seven festivals. Well, these things are important to God, because He put the up front in the Bible as the abecedary of the faith. God cares about them a whole lot more than He cares about the five points of Dordt.
I guess if you or others here think that Jesus cares more about man-made confessions like the WCF than He does about what He chose to put in the Bible, and that educating future generations is governed by the WCF more than by what the Bible says, then we don’t have the same religion, or for sure not the same understanding of the Reformed faith.
And if you think that the Holy Spirit is not active in the ongoing prophetic conversations in the Church as the Bible is opened and considered, and instead we have to stick with man-made formulae as MORE ultimate in our considerations, then we don’t have the same understanding of the Reformed faith at all.
So, back to you. Tell me why I’m wrong and how I’m misunderstanding what you wrote.
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Jordan, I’m sorry, but this is nonsense. You are effectively a church of one. Every question is, in the end, cast back upon your own conscience, and you are reserving the trump of “conscience” over and above any other authority. Ipso-facto, anti-traditionalist, as I said.
Clarification: the above is a response to Jordan Mark, not to James Jordan’s reply to Hart. Isn’t blogging fun!?
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If I might use the Jordan-Caleb conversation as a way of answering Caleb’s question: It think it is entirely possible and indeed commanded that we “go along” with things in the church, a given tradition, that we don’t personally agree with. There are degrees of this. I may eat crackers and drink grape juice sitting in a pew, but I may decide I won’t serve them if asked to stand in for the minister one week (I am ordained, so that might happen). I may choose to drop out of a stanza of a metrical psalm because it completely distorts the meaning of the psalm, but without causing a scene over it.
The same is true of following traditions in the larger sense. When I was in school and being ordained, long ago, men were allowed to take exceptions to the Confession. These were approved by the presbytery, which meant that the living Church was involved. One agreed to abide by the Confession while personally disagreeing with one or another part of it. Sometimes one was told not to teach on these issues; other times it was determined that it was okay to differ with the words of the Confession. The OPC and PCA are full of men who deny that God made the world in the space of six days. (And I trust that those here who are concerned about us FVers not respecting tradition are all fully committed to 6-day creation.)
So, I don’t see the problem. It is a heresy to submit to tradition. We submit to God and to one another. It is the one-another aspect of the Church that looks back and stands within both larger and smaller traditions, but in a living manner, and to which we submit.
If I’m a member of, say, the Associated Reformed Presbyterians, I submit to their tradition (in their living presbytery), and more broadly to Presbyterianism and the WCF, and more broadly to the Reformed faith, and more broadly to the Reformation, and more broadly to the Western Catholic tradition, and more broadly to the whole Catholic tradition. I also submit to the Bible. If I can’t completely explain all that in some boxed-up rationalistic sense, so what? I live it.
So, is that roughly what you mean by tradition, or not?
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Caleb: Again, I did not say “anti-” but “a-traditional.” I’m not against tradition.
But for the life of me I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Why should there be such hostility against my comment that we seem to “have lost the ability to critique and correct our tradition when the Bible calls for it.” The Scriptures do indeed call for us to guard against our tradition taking the place of God’s Word. I learned that in Sunday school. Jesus teaches this in his interaction with the Pharisees (Matt. 15).
Is our precious Reformed tradition above criticism? I believe it is part of our tradition to be suspicious of tradition, and maybe more importantly, to never rely on our tradition to adjudicate theological and ecclesiastical controversies. But that’s all we seem to want to do these days.
We don’t read this in WCF 1.8: “The Reformed tradition being immediately inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence, kept pure since the Reformation, is therefore authentic; so as, in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto it.”
Nor do we find this in WCF 1.9: “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the the Reformed tradition: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), only the Reformed tradition can provide the answer.”
And this is not what WCF 1.10 says: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Reformed tradition.”
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These are odd comments. Of course you do not have to accept the tradition if your conscience opposes it. But, that means you cannot take vows to support the tradition and then undermine it.
This reminds me of the old “higher law” interpreters of the U.S. Constitution. Sitting in their Senate seats by the authority of the U. S. Constitution, they waxed eloquent about about their committment to a “higher law” that superseaded the Constitution.
A higher law does exist than the Constitution but you cannot invoke it against the document you swore to uphold.
You see how that applies to our ecclesiastical situation.
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W.H., this is a very bad analogy for all sorts of reasons that I don’t have time to explain at the moment.
For now, I would simply ask you to look at PCA BCO 21-5 and 24-6 and think about what the vows actually say.
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September 20th, 2007 at 11:22 am, Mr. Stegall said:
“what spiritual condition prevails such that the Reformed faith is rendered helpless to resist the tide of what Lints appropriately called the “evangelical party in our midstâ€?
I suggest that both sides of this controversy are promoting that condition to the ultimate ruin of the goods both sides believe they are protecting.”
Mr. Stegall, you seem from this comment already to have a good idea what that spiritual condition is, since you suggest that both sides of the controversy are promoting that condition. Could you please explain what that condition is and how both sides are promoting it?
Mr. Hart, could you please explain how your view of tradition as binding the conscience differs from Rome’s view of tradition, and how it fits in with WCF 1.9 & 1.10? How is “anti-tradition” to actually believe what the tradition says about its relation to Scripture? WCF 1.10: “The supreme judge by which…all decrees of councils…are to be examined…can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture.” Cf. WCF 31.4, that all synods and councils can err are not to be made the rule of faith.
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Methinks FVers protesteth too much about evangelicalism. Their rendering of tradition and the Bible is as modern and as individualistic as it comes. “Always suspicious of tradition”? “Man-made confessions”? “The Spirit does not work through man-made confessions”? Have I been beamed back to the time of Finney?
How FVers say these things and then say they are traditional is truly a stretch of the imagination.
Believe it or not, James, your interpretations of the Bible are man-made. Unless you’re not a man. And JMyers, all of your quotes from the WCF and insertions of the Reformed tradition only prove that you are indeed standing in a tradition that regards the Bible in relation to other authorities in a certain way.
And can we stop with the charges that to defend the Reformed tradition is to say it does not need to be critiqued? Traditions by their very nature critique themselves. Even Rome does. But to appeal to the Bible instead of man-made creeds is really to appeal JMyers or James Jordan. Frankly, I’d rather take my chances with a committee (which is what the Westminster Assembly was and those synods and councils that adopted the Standards).
And James Jordan, do you really think that the Holy Spirit “does not” work through creeds or confessions? Aren’t sermons “man-made”?
BTW, why is it okay to say that the Reformed tradition needs to be critiqued but then get upset when the FV tradition gets criticized? Might not the answer to this have something to do with the idea that FV is a tradition of its own, with a certain way of interpreting the Bible, certain authorities, certain institutional outlets for propagating FV, and that the critiques by the OPC and PCA have come from outside the FV tradition?
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I don’t know of anyone who is upset that the FV tradition is criticized. I’ve never seen a criticism of it. I’ve seen criticisms of utterly fantastic scarecrows called FV, but I’ve never seen any actual criticism of the things supposed FV people have actually said and written. If anyone actually wants to read what we write and honestly interact with what we believe, that would be refreshing! But as long as these “study committees” only criticize myths and fables that no one actually believes, they are only of interest to students of pathology.
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Is it possible to return to Caleb’s original points?
Meyers is certainly correct that at least part of being Reformed (or being Protestant for that matter) is being identified with an anti-tradition. Those of us hoping to preserve and defend a Reformed tradition must deal with this uncomfortable fact. … Christianity is a conversionary religion….
Yes, enshrined in the Protestant tradition is the confession that the Scriptures are the ultimate and only final rule of faith and life. So, when one finds something in the subordinate standards which he cannot support from scripture, which seems to depart from, or contradict the Scriptures, what does he do?
First, being a good churchman, he seeks to reform what is amiss. He does so in as submissive a manner as possible. If the church courts listen to him, then modify the offensive point, he continues a happy churchman. If his point is rejected, he has to decide if he can, in good conscience, continue to submit to the Church’s confession. If he is humble, he may be able to come back around and admit his own view as mistaken. Or he may decide that the issue is not significant enough to require his leaving. Or, he may push his point so far that he gets defrocked or excommunicated.
This is how it functions in the denominations with which I am most familiar (RPCNA, ARP).
And, church courts also have to make decisions. Is the case presented such that it warrants a fresh look at the Subordinate Standards?
I’ll give two examples from personal ecclesiastical experience. But first, I want to speak to something Dr. Hart is saying, which seems to be a post critical (post modern?) use of the tradition (even though pre-moderns and moderns recognized the same ironic point he presses). And, this is that “an appeal to the Scriptures” is really an appeal (merely?) to an interpretation. Hence, Jordan is really using his own private interpretation to trump a common confession. FV (what Jordan thinks on a given point) Tradition trumps WCF tradition. Jeff Meyers even drew a rebuke from Caleb for failing to stick to his guns for alleged fear of what the hyper confessionalists would make of what he was saying. He seemed to Caleb to be hedging his bets dishonestly. But, I ask Dr. Hart, how does one go about showing that the Scripture really does trump the tradition? I think he would say, submit it to the church, through the appropriate committees, and let the Holy Spirit do His work. This is my view. I don’t think Jim Jordan would be against this. But, should the committee not follow the Spirit, then what? Jim is quite ready to see the dead bones of the pharisees and shake off the dust, and let the dead bury their dead.
But, Jeff and Doug and Peter and Joel and others are more ‘conservative’ (and Jim is more than most of you think!). One discerns the difference of tone here amongst the various FV proponents. I just want to hear what Dr. Hart believes about the primacy of Scripture as a real thing. No body here is a simple fundamentalist, though many of us do not mind being thought Biblicists.
Two Experiences:
1. A seminary professor made a comment in class to a bunch of students about what dinasaurs ate before the fall – something meaty and crunchy. I.e., there was animal death before the fall. This troubled a student. I had a hand in bringing a paper to the Midwest Presbytery seeking to get clarity on what the Subordinate Standards had to say about this. A committee was appointed. A (good!) report was issued and adoped by Presbytery, and was sent not only to Synod, but with recommendations for actions in the Seminary and the other Teaching institutions (Geneva College, and such) of the denomination. But, when Synod appointed a committee, the net result was “don’t prelegislate a case.” It was actually a careful response, which called for non-action, without prejudicing the interpretation of the Standards. THe committee men actually agreed with the Presbytery report, but did not want to force the issue on Synod and the Seminaries /College, etc. So, without going the way of the OPC, or the PCA, the RPCNA allowed defacto teaching contrary to the subordinate standards (re: length of creation days especially) to go without comment. Okay. Net effect was – unofficially – to make it clear that most of the RPCNA were young earthers, but that they didn’t want to be obnoxious about it. Its a nice group of folks who try not to force people to eat crow.
2. My own journey with respect to worship. I was put on a committee to deal with a paper on worship. I came to firm conclusions that the RP Testimony justifying exclusive Psalmody was errant, and went too far. I could happily continue to practice it, but did not believe it was accurate to say that the regulative principle (and there were some issues there too, but this only goes back to Caleb’s original point!) forbade the singing of (at least) other scripture songs. My view came to be that other scripture songs are at least as fully warranted as the 150 Psalms. The RP Testimony’s interpretation of how Eph 5 and Col 3 were to be applied was that we are commanded to sing Psalms, Hymn Psalms and Spiritual Psalms, but only the 150 in the Psalter. There was a lot of good committee work, and it continues to bear some fruit. But, the committee rejected my views, and synod rejected a minority report, almost not even printing it in the Minutes of Synod (which would have been unusual). During all this I let presbytery know my struggles, and my resultant views were patent. So, I failed to ‘reform’ the church.
On the basis of tradition, I could have happily continued as a submissive RPCNA minister. But, BECAUSE our TRADITION requires that we say that what we do in worship is all that is commanded, and nothing that is not commanded (which is, by way of the RPCNA RPW, forbidden), to go on as an RP in good standing under the basis of “tradition” would have been hypocritical.
Now, I do not share these details to stir up a fresh discussion of Exclusive Psalmody. I share them because they represent exactly the kind of conundrum which Caleb is getting at in the nature of the Protestant traditional enterprize.
Were the RPCNA able to say, “This is our best practice, and our tradition, but we do not condemn those who practice other traditions,” then I could stay on. But, because of their strict confessional position requiring a strict Biblical position (not a tradition) on worship issues, my ‘private’ interpreation would have left me in a lurch of conscience. No body asked me to leave, or told me to go. I could have stayed. But, I did face an epistemological crisis.
Now, in leaving the rpcna for a sister denomination with the same roots (ARP), I did not unchurch or condemn the RPCNA. It still feels like home for me more than the ARP. But, I was a Confessionalist. I didn’t think the denomination had to go back to the Bible to settle its own discipline when it came to the teaching of the Confession on Creation Days. There is a place for subordinate Standards to be sufficient. The burden of proof is on those who disagree that God created all things of nothing “in the Space of Six Days,” not on the denomination to prove that this is the Biblical position. So, while the denomination DID take a fresh look at the Scriptures on worship questions, though they returned to an only slightly revised (more robustly Covenantal perspective) position on worship, Who was I to continue to trouble the church from within? Others have stayed. The consensus may actually be shifting.
But, Caleb is right to say that we have to face up to these things. There is much wisdom in his comments about the nature of constitutionalism and how it functions in the Modern Western context.
But, this is not a back-handed suggestion to those in the PCA and OPC who hold to FV views that they ought to hit the road for the CREC (which, by the way, was not founded as a refuge for FV views – but came from a bunch of former baptists coming to reformed views in a remarkable way). I fear that the FV issues will have to be pounded out and worked through. And, to do that, people ought to stay where they are as long as they can.
I’m glad for this discussion. It has not become the same tired old thing yet. But, it is a good idea for all of us (you) to realize that you are not talking to the same old disputants once again. I think that mostly we know this. So, it has been refreshing.
And, I don’t have a soulution to the protestant dilemma. It think it is actually a part of the Christian dilemma. Jesus said both to listen to what the Scribes and Pharisees said, and to do what they say and not what they do – AND – he called them whited seplechures and destroyed their whole world. Something new was being born, and the old wine skins and old clothes could not handle the explosive developments. I don’t think FV is *that* explosive. It was not intended to be a “movement” (it really was a couple of Pastors’ conferences).
And, the issues are worth fighting about, though I don’t think they rise to the level of Impeachment!
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Tony, that’s a great point to keep in mind–that this discussion is not with the same old combatants, and there are very different concerns at play.
Also, I agree that the “protestant dilemma” is in some measure an accetuated version of the broader “Christian dilemma.”
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